Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Reflection on the Second Sunday of Easter, Year A

Text focus: John 20:19-31 Click here for biblical texts

Huddled in a room too small for their number fearing for their lives keeping windows covered password required for entry; others hiding outside praying ICE agents do not see them or dogs smell them before night when they slip across the border trusting false IDS will be ready so they can find work a place to stay a new life to build in the land they hope will accept their bravery and award freedom; or gay men, lesbians, trans people hiding in closets, wanting life, not sure they have strength to claim wholeness.

An old story, fear driving people into hiding, authorities, angry crowds, vigilantes, pious rule-enforcers, fundamentalists of one sort or another, determined to tamp down freedom movements, different religions, new ideas, ways of living beyond poverty and despair— not unlike disciples behind locked doors the evening of the day Jesus rose, afraid they would be next on crosses.

But Jesus visited them to breathe Spirit into them give them hope. release them from their prison get on with sharing good news healing the sick witnessing to divine love.

So today’s question: whose prisons will we visit whose cells will we unlock which fugitives will we take in which disciples of love and hope and family and justice will we welcome to our churches, our homes to keep them safe, whose hearing will we attend to speak on behalf of mercy and justice for all or at least for one or two or more of those most vulnerable most afraid most at risk?

About this poem . . . . It is so easy to leave the disciples back there, knowing things will get better for them. But we have been, maybe are, afraid; and have received the Spirit too; what do we do with it?

Reflection on Resurrection of the Lord, Year A

We rise to celebrate, go to church, dinner, parade, egg hunt. Are we raised, too, on this New Year’s Day, life no longer the same, when we, like him, have been changed, given new spiritual garments, shown new paths as God’s beloveds to navigate a world that acts as if there is no God?

First Apostle Mary Magdalene hung out at the tomb, waiting— she feared all was lost but we know otherwise, God still active, Jesus keeps rising, Holy Spirit moving all the time, we can miss it if we stop witnessing, watching, being open to the latest— where are we waiting and what are we waiting for?

Signs of the times were not good then, not good now, powers of death and oppression and hate still strong, maybe stronger in age of alt-whatever, but during and after two dinners today— the open meal in the sanctuary and the ordinary one at home or church basement or restaurant— we can witness, we can follow Mary as she followed Jesus, share the good news, tell the world that life and love win, as they do when enough people show up to testify, when we wake up, show up stand up, act up, live up, speak up
so people still in their tombs,
captive to fear—
including ourselves—
put on the love and hope and power
of God, and go forth singing
Jesus Christ is risen today,
knowing we are raised, we are pulled up,
ready or not we are made new,
again.

Reflection on Holy Saturday, Year A

Can we pause today, take stock of how we feel after watching Jesus bleed to death on the cross? We know he will come back, we prepare for the feast to come tomorrow, but today can we find a way to do as Joseph of Arimathea did, care for the dead body, or sit shiva as Jews and friends do? Or do we, like some who opposed Jesus, post a guard around our hearts so he cannot touch us from the tomb?

This is the day God has made, we may not wish to rejoice, and yet cannot our tears water a tree cut down that it may sprout again, emerging from the womb of our soul, leaking like tremors of pure sunlight against tides of death and destruction, reminding us in the quiet of desperation that God is always more— keep watch bear witness.

Reflection on Good Friday, Year A

When I was a boy in a small town 40 miles northwest of Detroit I asked my Dad, “Why are stores closing at noon today?” He told me it was because Jesus was killed. I cried. I loved Jesus. We went to church and cried together.

Not so many stores close today, even then the South Side Grocery on the wrong side of town did not close. Years later, as a teen, at noon on the day Jesus died, I helped Dad clean out an apartment when the tenant left unexpectedly; new renters were due later that day. I felt ashamed—we were on Main Street with our truck loading trash for the dump while Jesus was dying, and good people were with him (a few people drove by, they were not with Jesus either, and did not seem bothered to see us). Were we like disciples who disappeared— maybe they had work to do at home or needed to fix their nets and boats?

A body will be struck down as I write and as you read this meditation.

What if we sat in church, or even home or a park, by ourselves or with others, three hours every time someone in our town, or Jerusalem and the West Bank, Chicago or Ferguson, Syria or South Sudan, dies a violent, avoidable, death, every time a child dies of malnutrition, starvation, in a world with enough food for all, every time a refugee is shot struggling to get to a land where they can breathe?

We don’t have to wear church clothes, just sit, and ask forgiveness. Nothing else would get done. We’d be sitting all the time no sleep, no reading, no eating, nothing but sitting, praying, mourning the dead, and our failure to stop the killing.

Reflection on Holy Thursday, Year A

Moses told the Hebrews to prepare for their journey of liberation by eating prescribed food and marking their doors with the blood of lamb on which they feasted. They set off, on foot, through desert and sea to and throughout the land promised by God.

The ancients used their feet, just as we do— dirty, calloused, twisted, arthritic, gnarled, hard or soft, massaged with oil, too, sweet scented or not, smelly sweaty feet common— all sorts and conditions of human feet. on journeys called by God.

Now here is something very strange: Rabbi Jesus wants to wash our feet — even Peter’s, who, of course, objects as he always does. Is there ever a time when there is not at least one Peter in the group, one long ago offended by the idea of his Lord stooping to wash feet, like today’s recoiling at showing the imperfection of feet, even more at being asked to touch others’?

Today, on Passover, Jews everywhere, believers or not, gather to share bitter herbs, unleavened bread, greens, haroset, and lamb or substitute. Most Christians avoid Jesus when it comes to feet. Strange. So many ask, “What would Jesus do?” How about: what he did? Just not with feet.

A preacher said, “Jesus touched his heart and there was healing in his hands.” I want healed feet for miles ahead, years, I pray, of journeying with God. I need strong, resilient feet empowered to support journeys from my Egypts to new worlds promised again and again. I want company, too, I can’t make it alone. Let me bless yours with living water, sacred touch, our Jesus feet guiding us all the way together.

About this poem . . .Every year on Holy Thursday, I am deeply moved by the washing of feet. It is such a humble act—to allow my feet to be washed and to wash others’—so like Jesus to assume the role of servant and invite us to do the same. The invitation, I hear command, is to be agents of healing and to allow ourselves to be healed by the human touch of others.

Written for and Delivered at the
Interfaith Passover Seder
sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace – Metro DC Chapter
at Calvary Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.
March 19, 2017/5777

I join you tonight as I did last year in prayer and hope, as a queer Christian minister and theologian/poet, married to a beautiful Jewish man, member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Reform Temple, and an LGBTQI affirming, multi-racial Protestant church, citizen of this nation that still imprisons Native peoples on reservations and kills descendants of slaves on the streets for crimes of living while Red and/or Black, where plagues of ethnic, gender, religious, bodily, and sexual hates are often the center of public life, as they live and grow among some at or near the pinnacle of national leadership.

We are not alone in taking land, we know its ancient roots in Torah, and we know countless ones today who are displaced, unplaced, misplaced, replaced as were hundreds of thousands in the Nakba, just as we know that second class citizens live not only in prisons, ghettos, and reservations here but also on streets and in neighborhoods of Jerusalem, along with others who are citizens of no country confined to refugee camps, water-less deserts, and outposts under constant threat of dislocation, trying to live and breathe where once they were born and played as children, and grew to tend their flocks and orchards.

So as we gather in the midst of ugliness, fear, and othering, we claim our inheritance as people who cherish liberation, our own and that of others, knowing this day
like all others is made for us to wake up, grow up,
look up, act up, stand up, live up, speak up
so captives go free.

We gather in an ancient and honorable ritual
celebrating another time when people rose to be free,
and like them our words, songs, prayers, and food
prepare us and recommit us to march, to resist,
to claim the mantle bequeathed by Moses,
and Esther and Jeremiah, to speak truth to powers,
to say to modern princes: Let the people of Palestine breathe,
end the Occupation of their land, their homes, their minds—
and yes, well-funded overlords, free yourselves from the tangled webs
you create with ancient enmities and entitlements
creating more war, more chaos, more ugliness, more death.

We seek a new way, a time of milk and honey for all, when peace and justice glow in and through the golden dome of God for all the world. We shall do our part to make it so, knowing, believing, it is our divinely inspired mission, to join with many others here and there, to create the new Jerusalem, the new Israel, the new Palestine, the new USA, the new people there and here, everywhere, no longer living and walking in fear, no longer dispossessed, no longer forgotten, no longer denied entry, exit, jobs, housing, life, or dignity for being on the wrong side of one line, one wall, one gate, one identity, or another.

Reflection on Palm Sunday, Year A

We say each week in church “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of God.” Who do we mean? Are we thinking of Jesus riding on the donkey in Jerusalem or our pastor, preacher, other spiritual leader? Or ourselves? Could we be the ones who are blessed to come in the name of God?

When the alarm goes off in the morning, do we come to in the name of God? Pee and shower in the name of God, eat breakfast, get dressed, go to work, lunch, the store, return home, eat dinner, bathe the children, tuck them in, watch television, read the paper or our book, have sex, go to sleep, in the name of God?

The crowds acclaimed the Son of Daivd as he rode the donkey walking on their cloaks and branches, a peoples’ carpet— believing he was their champion in the face of domination by Rome and distance from religious authorities. Today, without fanfare, in terror of what lies behind and perhaps ahead, refugees flee the devastation of war, extremism, chemicals, poverty, maybe all of the above, Blessed are the ones who come, claiming in Jerusalem and elsewhere power that resists fear, breaks institutional barriers, defies narrowness, all in the name of the God of of holiness everywhere, in everyone.

Who knows what will happen—a dead body hanging from a tree or lying on a street or the desert with a chest full of bullet holes, or sex work or drug-running for a pimp, or maybe, just maybe, a new life, dignity, deepening of soul connection, new love or better job, appreciation by others for gifts freely shared in sacred communion.

Whatever. Blessed are the ones who come, and go, in the name of God.

About this poem . . .It is easy to read or listen to this familiar story and see Jesus, the donkey, the disciples, the crowds, and to wave our own branches (although I have not seen coats laid on the ground), and feel good. But what about today? What are we doing that might cause others to see God riding or walking or loving or speaking in and/or through us? And do we allow ourselves to see, to experience, the blessing of ordinary, as well as extraordinary, others who come in the name of God?

Reflection for the 5th Sunday in Lent, Year A

His bones were not yet dry but after four days his soul-less body needed Jesus to breathe him back to life just as Ezekiel records God did for the Israelites. How many times have you been resurrected? Even in a good life there can be dead ends for which holy help is the only way out.

Fleeing war zones, finding refuge in camps, waiting for clearance to emigrate, arriving in a strange land— this is resurrection, a time to hear “Unbind them, and let them go, ” just as gay men, lesbian women, transgender siblings, rescuing themselves from closets, breathe freer where spirits and bodies live in wholesome union, no longer victims of anti-sex and gender wars .

Tombs are everywhere, rulers building more private prisons, hells hundreds of miles from somewhere, Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) freezing folks out, police continuing urban carnage within walls of despair and fear. Lazarus was lucky, love that freed his entombed body seems in short supply today.

The Mary-Martha-Lazarus-Jesus Family home a center where ties that bind are love, where even when he is late, Jesus is welcomed, freed to be himself, to do impossible things that look easy because he wastes no words in argument, going right to freeing the captive, not seeking applause or waiting for authorization from any ruler except the One whose decrees are freedom, life, love, hope.

Reflection for the 4th Sunday in Lent, Year A

A person need not be born blind to not see; it happens all the time, those sure of Earth’s flatness, slavery ordained by God, women unfit to lead. Just last week I ran a stop sign I did not see, and before that I knew beyond all doubt the name of that tune I hummed most of my life— too bad I lost the bet.

Those born blind do not not see, drawing on different methods to perceive –like butterflies and bees with acuity of color more nuanced than ours– what we with working eyes often miss. Always tempting to make fun of Pharisees not seeing the truth of Jesus right in front of them, but if fast-melting Arctic ice and destruction of Great Barrier Reefs cannot convince us something is wrong with the planet what good will new glasses do?

Facts are hard to see when we don’t want to see them, when by the ways of the world, some things are not seen— white people not seeing Black lives that matter—and others magnified by repetition and conventional wisdom into sacred texts—our nation right or wrong. Everyone knows are dangerous words, a Ph.D. does not protect us from ignorance any more than a creed built by humans or certainty about the truth of holy writ. Even Jesus failed to see the woman of Canaan, confusing her with a dog.

How many ways of seeing are there? Stay open.

About this poem . . . This familiar story is both inspiring and troubling. Pharisees are again blinded by their ideological prism and Jesus does what seems a good thing anyway. Yet, is there not also a presumption that being without the use of one’s eyes is a condition that needs correction—a burden so heavy that it must be lifted by divine agency? I admit to not wanting to lose my eyesight, and yet people without it perceive reality I never know.

Reflection on the 3rd Sunday in Lent, Year A

Water is soft except when frozen; hearts, too, locked into hate and fear, blocked from openness by judgment, anger, othering. Soft walls do not exist, hot or cold, except for Hebrews marching between watery walls to escape Pharaoh.

Only way to overcome hardness of a wall is to climb over or go around, cut a doorway through. When people want to keep others out they build a wall, but it is not easy to wall up the river that runs between them; water still flows somewhere, maybe even drowning those who built the wall. Pharaoh knew about being overwhelmed by water and Moses followed God’s direction to strike the rock at Horeb so water flowed and people drank.

Jesus was thirsty, probably still is, not for water, but for us, wanting more connection. So much life flows from times spent with him, but I forget he sits nearby, ready for me to ask. I wonder how often he has said to me, give me a drink, and I, unlike the Samaritan woman, neither hear nor reply. Is the wall around, or in, me higher, harder, than the one built by the enmity between her people and his?

About this poem . . . We focus often on how Jesus, despite his statement about the superiority of Jewish belief, spoke so openly with the woman of Samaria, and she with him. He did, with her cooperation, cross the historical boundary erected long before. What I have often missed, however, is how that crossing came, how the wall was breached, as the result of a simple request for a drink of water.